


Full on the Mouth

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Genre: Explorers, Financial Aid, Fireplaces, Gen, Iceland, M/M, Orphans, and relationships that should go places but never quite do, buffoons at the museum, getting drunk in the study, love through works, not through words, the shepherd's journal, too rich for your own good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:05:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Thatch, if you ever actually find that so-called journal, not only will I finance the expedition, but I'll kiss you full on the mouth!"</p><p>Preston B. Whitmore had never been happier to lose a bet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full on the Mouth

Preston B. Whitmore had always been a man to value his privacy.

So when he told Milo Thatch the tale about his grandfather and the discovery of the Shepherd’s Journal, he’d left a few things out.

\--

The first thing that ought to be mentioned was that he was drunk.

Despite being, in most other respects, a respected explorer, Thaddeus Thatch had once again failed to make an impression on the board at the Museum of Natural History on the subject of the lost city of Atlantis, and they were celebrating his failure.  It was the only thing they could do.  Preston had never been great with simple tragedy--he liked to throw money at his problems until they went away, and they always did.  He was not accustomed to powerlessness.

All he could do was throw money into distracting Thad, until he had to face it all in the morning.

“Iceland,” said Thad, gesturing in a vaguely Iceland-wards direction with his wineglass.  Preston rolled his eyes. 

“Not this again,” he groused, rubbing his fingers into his eyes.  “Thad, you’re a good explorer.  You’ve seen the world--the real world, mind you.  Brought back...stuff.  Artifacts.  Give it up.  Go do something exciting and reasonable down in Peru, or something.  Quit chasing fairytales.”

They sat before the gargantuan fireplace in Preston’s private study, the elephant tusks gleaming at the edges of the grate.  A blazing fire licked light and heat up the walls of the room, belying the squeal of the wind against the window panes and the plummeting temperature of a coming cold-front. 

Preston poured himself a little more wine and aimed carefully for Thad’s glass.  He missed, but hell if he didn’t have six more Persian rugs ready to replace this one.  

It was times like this, when he was well and truly sloshed, that he thought about how completely absurd wealth was.

“Iceland,” Thad insisted more loudly.  “It’s there, Pres.  Swear it.  Bet anything.  Anything at all.  God’s truth.”

“Lunatic,” Preston enunciated clearly, although he didn’t really feel it.  “‘S a legend.  Allegory, like.  Thing used to make clear another thing, and made up.  Plato is making things up, Thad, it’s just an example.”

“Truth!” Thad countered, sipping his wine.  “Got others.  Authorities.  To back it up.  All over the world.”

“I suppose you want to find the forbidden plain of Leng, too, hmm?” Preston asked, giving Thad a bit of the hairy eyeball.  He’d been teasing Thaddeus about lost and arcane civilizations since they were undergrads, and now, well into their middle-age, he was somehow still having the same damn half-sozzled teasing conversations as ever.  “It’s all here, Thad.  The good stuff.  Global economy, that thingummy--it’s covered.  Why, there’s yogis and shaman and all sorts of thing running around in this day and age.  Why not study them?”

Thad shook his head obstinately.  “Iceland, Pres.  And Atlantis.”

Preston twisted his his seat, kicking both legs over the arm of his chair.  He found another half-full bottle on the floor, and poured out its contents into his cup, Thad’s cup, and the carpet.  “Not this again.  They’re calling you crazy, Thad, and at the moment I see their point.”

“It’s out there!” Thad insisted, slamming a fist against the arm of his own chair.  “Bet anything on it!  Stake the whole wad, by thunder!  That journal is out there and I can find it!  I’ll bet everything on it!”

“You will, will you?” Preston asked, looking through the green glass of the bottle.  He took a long drink.  “All right.  All right, you cocky sonuva...all right.  Here’s what, Thad.”

“What’s what?”

“This is,” Preston said carefully.  “Thatch.  Listen, Thatch.”

“I’m listening,” insisted Thad.  He took the green glass bottle away and found a few stray drops in it, pouring them into his glass and chugging the whole thing back.

“Thatch,” said Preston, enunciating with grave focus.  “If you can find that journal, I’ll pay your way to the briny deep.”

Thad barked out a harsh laugh.  “You won’t!  You don’t believe me!  You think I’m an old kook!”

“I do not, damn it all,” Preston insisted.  “You just act like a kook, sometimes.  That’s all.  You aren’t really a kook.”

“They think I’m insane,” Thaddeus said, growing morose.  “They think I’m a lunatic.  Chasing nothing.  My own tail, maybe.  They think I should be locked up, probably. 

Preston slammed his fist against the back of the chair.  “Christ’s sake, Thad!” he barked.  “Don’t talk like that!”

Institutionalization had been a threat on and off for a large part of their lives, after all.  Whitmores were eccentric by nature, but every now and then a stray black sheep would find itself chucked into the booby hatch.  Preston’s mother had died in one, only a few days after his first birthday.  Preston himself had flirted with the threat in his younger years, when his father had found out about his liaisons with some of the boys at school.  

And Thad.  Jesus, poor Thad, who didn’t have money to throw at the problem, who, if he’d had any other roommate in sophomore year than Preston, would’ve wound up in the funny farm in two shakes of a lamb’s tale, if anyone else had seen that boy in his bed...  That one moment of horrified, brain-breaking vulnerability had brought Preston closer to Thad than he’d ever been to anyone else.  Ever since then, he’d been Thad’s friend--and he took that very, very seriously.  He’d follow Thad to hell, and not just because he was a brilliant man, all else aside, or a good man, or an excellent conversationalist.  But because he was flawed in the ways Preston was flawed, and he could never be bought or sold, and he still wanted Preston’s company anyway.

Institutionalization.  No, not for him, and not for Thad, who couldn’t defend against it on his own, overly imaginative as he was.  Dreamy, head-in-the-cloud Thad, the last explorer, the madman with a mind sharper than an Oxford don...

Thad shook his head, tilting his wrist and waving his wineglass in low, slow pendular semi-circles.  Preston reached down again and--voila--like alcoholic flowers springing from the floor, there was another wine bottle.  He was convinced that this had to be the consequence of his household staff, the quiet, efficient, unsmiling shadows and wraiths that lived beside him in his titanic, empty family estate.  Those wraiths knew their business, at least.

Preston grabbed his friend’s fist and held the cup and the man steady, pouring out another serving of wine.  For himself, he simply perched, however unsteadily, on the arm of his chair and took a slug right from the bottle.  

“‘S true,” Thad mumbled, drinking.  “They want to lock me up, Pres.  Think it’s madness.  But it’s there, damn it all, it’s waiting for me. 

Preston took another gulp from the bottle, feeling himself about to do something monumentally stupid.  It often happened that way, whenever he opened his mouth while blitzed.

“Thatch,” he said, coughing a little around the burn.  “God damn it all to hell, Thatch, if you ever  actually find that so-called journal, not only will I finance the whole expedition, I’ll--I’ll--”

He had to think of a thing crazy enough.  A thing Thad would never expect.  A thing to make it clear that he didn’t ever think Thad would make it, because that would push the strange, brilliant little man harder.  

“I’ll kiss you full on the mouth!”  Preston concluded, gesturing at him with the bottle and accidentally slopping a little on both man and armchair.  What the hell.  He had twenty more armchairs and he could outfit Thad in silk pajamas for the rest of his life, if he wanted.

Thad gave him an unexpectedly keen look.  “Put it in writing,” he said, nodding seriously.

That was how they found themselves leaning over Preston’s writing desk, scrawling out a barely-legible legal document.  Preston B. Whitmore, Esq., would provide all desired financial aid to an expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis if, and only if, Thaddeus Thatch could successfully locate and recover the Shepherd’s Journal.  A long, loud argument followed, which resolved with an addendum to the contract--Preston B. Whitmore would also provide adequate funding for an Icelandic expedition to recover the Shepherd’s Journal.  Should Thaddeus Thatch fail in the recovery, he’d have to shut his God-forsaken trap on the subject of Atlantis and the Shepherd’s Journal forever after and go about behaving like a decent academic.

The document signed, they shook hands and passed out on top of each other in one armchair.

\--

“It’s Jim,” Thad said over the phone.  “And Isadora.  The car...I mean, it was a stormy night, and...”

Preston felt it like a punch to the gut.  He’d been there for Thad’s marriage to Mary Smith, in senior year.  She’d been a nice girl, generous, and forgiving, which had been the most important thing, anyway.  Preston still didn’t know if she’d known about her husband’s predilections--though he hoped to God that she hadn’t.  There were some things no one ought to have to bear, some secrets that should never find their way out.  He was glad he’d never had to face the alter.  He only would’ve made some poor woman miserable.  

With Mary, Thad had had little James, who’d always been a sprightly brat and a good creature.  He’d entirely lacked his father’s imagination, but that had been good for him, and he’d been able to build a solid life for himself and his wife.  

Last Preston had heard, they’d made Thad a grandfather--hell if that wasn’t a weird idea--to a little boy named Milo.

“Thad,” Preston said quietly.  “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

“I’m taking care of the boy,” Thaddeus said.  “Milo.  He’s...well, he’s just like Jim, but he loves a book.  Curious boy.  I...”  There was a suspiciously sniffling noise over the phone, and Preston closed his eyes, his grip tightening on the edge of the desk.  “I thought I might give a call.  You came to Jim’s wedding, although you didn’t exactly make yourself social, you grim old hermit...”

“What kind of man doesn’t go to his godson’s wedding?” Preston asked, leaning back in his seat.  “But thanks for telling me.  I’m...I’m sorry, Thad.  When is the funeral?”

“Friday.”

“You mind if I’m there?”  He was not a social man, but he figured that if you sent a fellow a Christmas gift every year of his life, you had the right to show up at his funeral.

“No,” said Thad.  “No, that’s fine.”

“Right,” Preston said.  “Anything you need, you let me know.  I’m swimming in cash here, and I’m dying to make a present of it.”

Thad hummed and hung up the phone.

That Friday, the sun was shining and the frosty wind bit through the wool of his coat as he stood at the edges of the sparse crowd that had come to pay their final respects.  He’d never done well in crowds--somehow, despite being perfectly capable with people one-on-one, he’d never figured out how to properly command a room.  

Thad stood at the edge of the grave in a black suit, with his hand on a little boy’s shoulder.  Milo, then.  Knobby-kneed and gangly, his sticky-outty ears pink with cold, Preston immediately decided that he liked the cut of the lad’s jib.  He wished the boy hadn’t been crying behind those huge Coke-bottle glasses, but what could you do?

The ceremony was short, elegant, and classy.  The twin graves were lowered into the ground and Preston watched grimly as the crowd began to evaporate.

When the last stragglers had wandered off, Preston came over and stood by Thad.  He put his hand on the other man’s shoulder, squeezing tightly.  

Thad turned and nodded at him after a moment.  Preston looked down to see the young boy staring into the grave. 

“Hello, Milo,” he said quietly.  “Preston B. Whitmore.”  He extended his hand.

Milo didn’t respond.  Thaddeus put both hands on the boy’s shoulders.

“He’s been through a lot,” Thad said softly.

Preston nodded.  “I understand.”  He couldn’t imagine, actually.  He’d felt horrible about it, but he’d been trembling with eagerness to throw the first spadeful of dirt upon his own father’s coffin, when the time had come.  Poor boy, to lose people he loved at an age old enough to remember them.  Preston couldn’t really imagine that.

He cleared his throat.  “I said it before, I’ll say it again.  Anything, Thad.  I mean it.”

Thad nodded.

Preston frowned.  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked, rather more gently.

Thaddeus shrugged.  “When you hit bottom, the only place left to go is up,” he said dully.

Preston wanted to hug him, an awkward and unnecessary gesture.  He settled for patting his hand on Thad’s shoulder.

“About Iceland--” the man said, and Preston squeezed his shoulder tighter.

“Later,” said Preston.  “It’ll keep.”

That night he went home and wrote to his banker, setting up a fund.  If Thad never accepted his money outright--and he might not, stiff and upright proud son of a bitch that he was--he could see about a scholarship for young Milo.

\--

Preston had kept himself halfway in and halfway out of Thad’s life for the next few years.  It was a delicate dance, between missing the best and dearest friend he had and wanting to clear off for the man to have a family and a normal life, such as it was.  He’d rather jump off a building than try to fill up this old house with the man’s presence when Thad could be spending the time with his grandson, and he found little enough to keep him busy.

He took the reins a little more on the family business, and watched his bizarre, absurd, meaningless wealth increase.  Milo’s fund followed the upward trajectory, and Preston found himself even more at odds with himself than he might’ve ever expected.  He hated it, the useless and sterile money that kept him so comfortably insulated and isolated from the rest of the world.  It allowed him to live alone and unmolested, and yet it consumed him from the inside, until it seemed that most days, all there was to him was cold, impersonal wealth.

Years trudged by, and yet it seemed like a few days when Thad called him up to say that Milo had been packed up and sent to college.

“Now,” Thaddeus said.  “About Iceland...”

“One track mind,” Preston commented, grinning.  Feeling himself coming back to life, he happily started to sign away his hated money.  “Come on over.”

\-- 

“You’re shitting me,” Preston said simply.

Thaddeus stood before him with an expression of unbridled glee, holding a book of obvious antiquity.  “It’s real.”

“You have got,” Preston said a little more loudly, “to be shitting me." 

“Not at all!” Thad said, opening the book.  “Look!”

Preston did not want to look.  Instead, he sunk down into a chair.  “Oh, my God,” he said, not quite believing it.

“It’s the Shepherd’s Journal.”

“You were right,” Preston said, stunned.

“And it was in Iceland,” Thad said, with a touch of smugness.

“You were right, you magnificent bastard!” Preston said, hopping to his feet.  He reached out and shook Thaddeus’ hand.  “Those--those idiots at the museum, Thad!  Those morons!  This is astonishing!  This is incredible!  This is--”

“This is the key to Atlantis,” Thaddeus said, running a hand down the book.  

Preston stood still for a moment, before he began pacing.  “We’re going to need a submarine,” he said, scrubbing his mustache and beard with his fingers.  “Obviously.  There’s nothing that will make the journey now; we’re going to have to build from scratch.  And the same crew.  We’re going to need trucks, diggers, rigs and cranes and diving equipment, to say nothing of provisions and clothing and a hell--I repeat--a HELL of a lot of the finest photographic technology money can buy, because by God we’re going to take photographs of every bit of everything you find and I’m going to hire people to paste a hundred thousand copies on every bit of that damn-fool museum in the dead of night!  Oh-ho, Thatch, this is going to be something pretty damn special, let me tell you--”

Thad opened his mouth, but before he could get a word out, Preston had thought of something else.  “In fact, hang on here, let me get Helga--this moment deserves a photograph, by thunder!”

Helga was tall and svelte and blonde, and had just the right combination of menace and charm to make her a valuable personal assistant.  Preston liked her very much.  She oozed raw competence.

“Ready, sir?” she asked, carefully holding the camera steady.

Preston took Thad’s hand and straightened his spine, putting his other hand on Thad’s other shoulder.  Thad gave him a quick smirk of a look, before tilting his pith helmet to a proper angle and posing smartly.

The camera flashed and mades its mechanical clunking noises.  “Is that all, sir?” Helga asked. 

“Let’s do another one, just in case that one didn’t turn out right,” Thad advised.  

“Picky, picky,” Preston grumbled.  “This is a top of the line machine, Thad.  It doesn’t make mistakes.”

Thad snorted, still posing.  “I suppose I should count myself lucky that you didn’t make good on that second half of the contract,” he mumbled, as Helga reset the camera. 

Preston straightened up a little more.  “That did not make it into the contract,” he said sternly.  Hell.  He was a little surprised Thad remembered it, these years later.

“It did,” Thad grinned.  “I took a look at it while you were in the wash room earlier.  Right at the bottom.  You’ll kiss me full on the mouth." 

Preston darted a quick look at the camera.

“A deal’s a deal,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.  Thad’s eyes widened just in time to find himself on the receiving end of a very forceful kiss.

What Preston remembered most clearly was that it had been far too damn long since he’d felt another man’s mustache and beard scraping against his face.  He’d missed that so much, it ached deep in his bones.  Second to the mustache was the way the man smelled, like old paper and ink and coffee and soap--a smell Preston could probably identify anywhere, and know immediately that it was this man.  Thad’s hand in his tightened its hold, and he wasn’t entirely sure he knew what that meant, but he was certain that he’d remember that dry, calloused grip for as long as he lived.

He knew it was going too far when he put his palm on the other man’s neck, so he decided to break apart then and there, before it got any more awkward.  

The camera flashed as they pulled apart, capturing forever their artificial disgust.  At least, Preston’s had been artificial, and mostly for Helga’s benefit.  He never was sure about Thad.

Still, Preston B. Whitmore had never been happier to lose a bet.

Later, talking and sitting in their armchairs, Thad picked his head up and gestured to Preston with his wineglass.  “I have bad news.”

“I’m not interested in bad news tonight, Thad,” he said simply.  “If ever there was a more appropriate time for wild jubilation, I have never yet heard of it.”

“I’m giving this to Milo,” Thad said, touching the book gently.

“Milo?” Preston asked, bewildered.  “What are you talking about?  Thad, damn it all, you’ve searched your whole life for this thing!”

“And I can’t read word one of it,” Thad said with a grim smile.  “Not a bit.”

Preston sat back in his seat.  “Thad.  What kind of kick in the teeth is this?”

Thaddeus shook his head.  “We’re remembered by the gifts we leave our children.  I never got a chance to leave anything for Jim.  I want to leave this for Milo.  He’s studying to be a linguist--he’ll be able to read it.  He’ll be able to do something with it.  And he’s young, and strong, and...”  Thaddeus shook his head.  “This took its toll, Pres.  I’m tired.  I want to leave it to someone who can go the whole way.”

“Don’t you dare talk like that,” Preston said darkly, pointing a finger at him.  “If you want to give up the most incredible find of the past thousand years, that’s your business.  But I’m as old as you, Thad, and if you start talking like a corpse, what is that going to mean for me?”

Thad gave him a thin little grin.  “I’ve made up my mind, Pres.  It’s going to Milo.”  He smiled brightly.  “But first...”

“But first?” asked Preston, rubbing his fingers into his eyes.  Thad in triumph was uncannily similar to Thad in despair--still the same blind faith, still the same headstrong, boggling determination.

“It’s going to the Natural History Museum.”

\--

No amount of talking would dissuade Thad, but when Preston invited him to dinner a few days later, he wished he’d tried a little harder. 

In the meanwhile, he’d had a portrait made out of the first photograph, and had just finished having it hung above the fireplace.  Thad would like it--it was just the kind of old-fashioned, courtly kind of thing that appealed to the other man’s sensibilities.  Preston planned to show it off.

He kept the evidence of the ill-fated kiss in a picture frame on the end table.  He could just imagine Thad’s wry grin, if he were to spot it this evening.

It was pouring sheets of rain outside, the sky dark and the air thick with humidity.  Thad usually declined having a car sent for him, much preferring to simply take a taxi or walk.  Tonight, Preston had insisted, but Thad had seemed set on doing it his way. 

When he arrived, Thad was hollow around the eyes, his shoulders hunched, oppressed by the weight of the world.  

All good humor gone, Preston led him wordlessly into the study and poured them each a drink, pushing one into Thad’s hand.  The explorer sipped it slowly, still clutching the brown-paper bundle tucked under his arm.  The fire popped and crackled, quietly observing the two men as they stood in shared solitude, silent.

Preston took a seat across from Thad and kept an eye on him, waiting.

Thad rubbed one of his temples.  “They think it’s a fake,” he said grimly.  “Which wouldn’t be a problem, the short-sighted morons...”

“Except?” asked Preston, anticipating the clatter of the other shoe.  

“There was a reporter from the post,” he sighed.  “Interviewing old Fenton Harcourt, I’d imagine.  But I was a more entertaining story.”

Preston didn’t read newspapers, and The Washington Post was a rag, anyway.  But thousands, maybe millions, of people did.  Smart people, academics, bankers, people who might’ve once respected Thaddeus Thatch.

He sat back with a low, deep sigh.  

“They included quotes from the members of the board,” Thad said, his voice cringing.  “And they all say I’m insane." 

“It’s not so bad,” Preston said, despite having no real idea of the scope of the problem or any way to fix it.  “We know it’s real, Thad.  We can make it work.”

“I’ve made the terrain rougher for Milo,” Thad mumbled.  He shook his head.  “It won’t be smooth sailing, now...I can take the humiliation, more or less, but he’s going to suffer.  He believes in Atlantis, he wants it just as badly as I did at his age.  They’re going to laugh at him.”

“But we’ll get him there,” Preston insisted.  

“I’ve tarnished the Thatch name,” Thad said.  He looked so very small in that armchair, a worn-out reed of a man, desiccated and exhausted.  “They’ll remember me as a lunatic.”

“Thad,” Preston said sternly.  “You are right.  There’s nothing anyone can do to change that.  Hell, you convinced me, and I was ready to sew your mouth shut to get a moment’s peace!”

Thad shook his head.  “That’s enough, Pres,” he said quietly.  “I’m going home.”

“Have something to eat,” Preston offered.  He had no idea when food had last passed the man’s lips, and with his scrawny figure, it couldn’t bode well for him to skip another meal.

Thaddeus shook his head and headed for the study door.  Preston followed him.  “Or stay the night.  It’s miserable out there, Thad.”

The explorer smiled thinly and shook his head again.  “I need to be home.”

On some level, Preston didn’t blame him.  This wasn’t a place built for comfort, and all of Preston’s weird decorations and artifacts would only remind him of what couldn’t be, in his lifetime.  Thad was never going to get to Atlantis, not in this condition, not without Milo.

“Take care of yourself,” he insisted, taking Thad’s hand and clasping it tightly.  Thad reached up and put a hand on Preston’s shoulder.  A little stiffly, Thad pulled him closer, hugging him briefly and tightly.

“Thanks for believing me, in the end,” Thad said.  Preston squeezed his shoulder.

“Only a complete idiot wouldn’t,” Preston said firmly.  Brooking no disagreement, he had the chauffeur come around and led Thaddeus to the car.

That was the last time he saw him.  A week later, there was a small notification in the obituaries--pneumonia, God damn it all straight to hell, he knew he should've sent the car to pick him up--and Preston burned the newspaper in his grate, unable to read the words more than once.

When he’d turned his back to the fire, only to find that the brown-paper wrapped was still in the chair Thad used to sit it, he’d finally lost control and let the tears roll down his cheeks.

\--

He’d stayed well to the back of the funeral ceremony, away from Milo and the despicable monsters that had come to laugh at the death of a great man.  It was a short affair, simple, tasteful.  He felt for young Milo, standing there alone and utterly orphaned, now.  

Once the young man had gone his way, Preston stopped and stood a little while at Thad’s grave.

After a moment, he thumped his cane on the ground.  “Damn it, Thatch, I won’t take any objections!” he said fiercely.  “Even if it’s just a lump of lifeless sea floor down there, that boy is going to get that journal and go find that city!  You hear me, you old coot?  You convinced me and by God, I’m not going to let that go to waste!”

He shook his head.  “I’m going to bring back proof, Thad!  One shred of proof, because you were no madman, Thad, you didn’t belong in a madhouse.  You were right.  And I’m going to prove it.”

His voice echoed briefly against the tombstones and died away.  Alone with the grave, he listened to the wind in the trees and sighed, bowing his head and only wishing that he could hear Thad’s mild protestations again. 

\--

All well and good to say that kind of thing, of course.  But Preston B. Whitmore was not a man to trust easily, and he knew next to nothing about young Milo.  Feeding secretive amounts of money into the boy’s life was one thing.

Trusting him with Thad’s legacy was another.  He’d have to prove that he was worth it, that he wanted it enough.

For the next four years, Preston kept his eyes open.  Milo finished school--a scholar of dead Indo-European languages--and began work at the Natural History Museum, of all places.

He’d make a casual inquiry here or there, or have one of his assistants look up recent publications from the museum.  Milo’s name never came up.  

While waiting for things to develop, Preston took to talking to Thatch’s portrait.  By heaven, he was 83 years old and one of the richest men in the country--possibly on the planet--and he could become an eccentric if he wanted to.  Usually he just talked about current events, books, whatever was occupying his day.  Once he started to venture into more personal territory, but he veered off at the last second.  If he couldn’t say anything while the man was alive, well...

Finally, he sent Helga down to ask around about Milo.  When he found out that the boy was working in the basement, primarily on the boiler, he decided to focus his attention a little more.

When he found out that Milo was making proposals for an expedition to find the Shepherd’s Journal, he decided that it was time, at last, to make himself a part of the boy’s life.  He sent Helga out with the car.

\--

The interview with Milo went well.  There had been a rocky moment or two, as he’d tested the young man, but he’d had to be sure.  From the first instant he’d seen him, he could see Thad all over the boy, in his eyes and his hands and his bones.  In that fiery determination, he saw young Thad again, impossibly reborn and almost exactly as he’d been at school.

How could he not want to give Milo everything?  He’d had to test him, had to be sure that he deserved it, because within the first ten seconds, he’d been ready to throw it all at the boy’s feet, no questions asked, and despite himself he knew he had to be cautious with the last bits of Thaddeus’ life he had.

But Milo came through.  And Preston had shown him the models he’d rigged for the expedition, proud of the design and of himself.  He was going to do it.  A Thatch was going to Atlantis, and he’d satisfy that loony contract he’d made all those years ago with his best friend. 

There had been a moment when it had nearly overwhelmed him, as he stood by the fire where he’d burned Thad’s obituary, where he’d sat up drinking with Thad, where he’d hung the the portrait of the two of them in a moment of triumph.  He’d said, softly, his heart aching, “Thatch,” and then he’d absolutely had to move on.  He’d tipped his hand far enough tonight, showed how much he cared about the old bastard, and it was time to pull himself back together so that they could get this young man on his way.

\-- 

As the submarine made its first crashing entrance into the water, Preston waved a thumbs-up at the large, yellow windows.  

Behind his back, he crossed his fingers.

‘Please,’ he thought, ‘let him find it.  And keep him safe.’

And he just hoped that, somewhere, Thaddeus Thatch knew that Preston B. Whitmore had been proud to lose this bet.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [New Horizons](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11160939) by [Mertiya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya)




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